Rhys Bowen - In a Gilded Cage

Minotaur Books New York

This is a work of fiction. All of the characters, organizations, and events portrayed in this novel are either products of the authors imagination or are used fictitiously.

IN A GILDED CAGE. Copyright 2009 by Rhys Bowen. All rights reserved. Printed in the United States of America. For information, address St. Martins Press, 175 Fifth Avenue, New York, NY 10010.

www.minotaurbooks.com

Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data

Bowen, Rhys.

In a gilded cage / Rhys Bowen.1st ed.

p. cm.(Molly Murphy mysteries)

ISBN-13: 978-0-312-38534-7

ISBN-10: 0-312-38534-X

1. Murphy, Molly (Fictitious character)Fiction. 2. Women private investigatorsNew York (State)New YorkFiction. 3. Irish American WomenFiction. 4. Women immigrantsFiction. 5. InfluenzaFiction. 6. WomenSuffrageFiction. 7. New York (N.Y.)Fiction. I. Title.

PR6052.O848I49 2009

823'.914dc22

2008036119

First Edition: March 2009

10 9 8 7 6 5 4 3 2 1

Contents

Grateful thanks to Doris Ann Norris for sending me a book called Lees Priceless Recipes, published 1895, containing, among other things, the secrets to patent medicines, cosmetics, and other glorious ways to poison people without really trying.

As always thanks to my home-based editing team: Clare, Jane, and John for their insights, as well as my New York team, Kelley Ragland and Meg Ruley.

In a Gilded Cage

I t is a well-known fact that we Irish are prone to bouts of melancholy, even without the help of the bottle. I suppose it goes along with the Celtic temperament and long, wet winters. Anyway, I was experiencing such a bout myself as I trudged home through a rainstorm that was wetter and colder than anything I had experienced at home in Ireland. March winds and April showers bring forth May flowersthat was how I learned it at school in Ballykillin. Well, it was now the middle of April and the gale that was accompanying the rain was worse than anything wed experienced in March. I would never understand the New York weather! One minute it could be sunny and springlike and suddenly the temperature would plunge thirty degrees and wed be back in winter again.

We had endured a particularly long, cold winter, with snow well into March. The bleak conditions had produced all kinds of sicknesses and people had been dropping like flies as influenza of the nastiest kind had turned to pneumonia. Even I, usually known for my robust constitution, had succumbed and spent over a week with a raging fever that finally subsided, leaving me feeling weak and drained. It had been almost three weeks now and I had hardly left the house until my small detective agency, P. Riley and Associates (I now being sole proprietor and associate rolled into one), received a job offer I simply couldnt turn down. It was from Macys new department store, at Thirty-fourth Street and Herald Square. They wanted me to look into a case of shoplifting that even their own store detectives had not managed to stop. Naturally I was thrilled and flattered, and I accepted immediately. I would have crawled from my deathbed for such an assignment. If I was successful, who knew where it might lead?

The weather had finally been springlike when I set off for work that morning, which was why Id worn my light business two-piece and not thought to take a top-coat or a brolly. Both of which I was now regretting as I came out of Macys to find that the temperature had plunged again and it was blowing a gale. Within seconds I was soaked to the skin, freezing cold, and thoroughly miserable.

I should have been feeling on top of the world. Id just concluded another successful case. In the guise of a new counter assistant I had spotted the pilfered goods being smuggled out in the trash by one of Macys own employees and then retrieved from the big trash bins by an accomplice. I had been handsomely rewarded for my services and was glowing with pride, dying to share my news with somebody when I stepped out of Macys back door and into the gale.

I had hopped on a passing Broadway trolley and later regretted this move as well, as I had to walk home from Broadway with the rain driving straight into my face and one hand jamming my charming spring hat onto my head. By the time I was halfway home I was well and truly sorry for myself. I was still weak, of course. I was not usually the kind of person who wallowed in self-pity or thought of herself as a helpless female. But as I trudged onward I was overwhelmed with gloomy thoughts. I longed for home and family and someone to take care of me.

I suppose this wave of blackness and insecurity had something to do with my intended, Daniel Sullivan. We werent officially betrothed yet, but we had definitely reached the stage of an understanding. And it was this that was making me unsettled and jittery.

Had my mother still been alive, she would have relished telling me that I was never satisfied. I suppose she was rightwhen Daniel had been in disgrace and on suspension from his position as captain of police, he had shown up on my doorstep every single day, and I had found myself wishing hed be reinstated quickly, not just for his sake but for mine too. I found myself seriously wondering whether marriage and domestic bliss were what I wanted for myself.

But recently he had been reinstated under the new commissioner of police and since then I had scarcely seen him. He had popped in once while I was at the height of my sickness, expressed concern, and then fled, not to be seen again. So now I was filled with doubts: did this lack of attention mean that he had tired of me, or was he merely taking me for granted now that he had more interesting ways to spend his time? If I married him Id have to come to terms with the fact that this was what life as a policemans wife would be like. And how would I take to being the good little woman, sitting at home with my darning, waiting for him and worrying about him? Plenty of food for thought there. Never satisfied, I chided myself. Wants security but doesnt want to be tied down. Wants love but wants freedom. Wants...

I never did get to the third want, as a great gust of wind swept off the Hudson and snatched my hat from my head. I gave a scream of despair and leaped after it. It was a new hat, my first extravagant purchase since my detective agency started to make money, and I wasnt about to see it disappear under the wheels of a passing wagon or hansom cab. I lifted my skirts and chased it in most undignified fashion to Fifth Avenue. Then a particularly violent gust caught it again and swept it out into the street just as I was about to pick it up. I didnt think twice as I ran after it. There was an angry honking and I was conscious of a low black shape hurtling toward me.

Holy mother of God, I gasped as I flung myself to one side. The automobile screeched to a halt inches in front of my hat, which now lay in the mud.